


An Interlude

by Alona



Category: Robot Series - Isaac Asimov
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-30
Updated: 2016-09-30
Packaged: 2018-08-18 17:43:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8170357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alona/pseuds/Alona
Summary: In which Stephen Byerley pays a visit.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TLvop](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TLvop/gifts).



"On the train here I read in a newssheet over a fellow passenger's shoulder that a philosopher had demonstrated that the seat of humor was the intellect, and not, if you'll permit the gross metaphor, the heart."

From this opening Dr. Calvin gathered that something untoward had taken place that accounted for Stephen Byerley's presence in her living room. Actually, he'd opened by gracefully declining to apologize for troubling her so early in the morning: "With such an imposing figure as yourself, the only way one can really approach you is by showing the most appalling cheek about it. I know you'll understand." 

And he knew perfectly well, too, that she kept increasingly eccentric hours, as the elderly are wont to do, and that consequently his visit was not ill-timed in the least. His apparent distress had anyway rendered an apology superfluous, and Dr. Calvin had ignored the whole performance as she showed him in. 

"Considering my work and my well-known attitude towards it," she now answered steadily, "you can't expect me to agree that feeling and intellect are so easily severable."

"Dr. Calvin," said Byerley gravely, "I believe you are mocking me."

"I was merely making the point that robots are quite capable of grasping certain kinds of humor. And robots, if you listen to the talk likening me to them, are popularly supposed to be all intellect, and no – heart." She gave a faint, fastidious sniff. "No, Stephen, I don't like your metaphor."

"Strike it from the record. Go on."

"It's nonsense, of course. Even in the early days you only had to watch a robot interact with its surroundings to know it experienced emotions – under any level of scrutiny that wouldn't also exclude human emotions, at any rate. The early roboticists didn't like you to say so. They were an unreflecting group of men. There were no emotions in their equations. But that breed of mathematician has all gone the way of the fashion for chromium plating, and we can all safely acknowledge that a robot is not only his programming, any more than a human is her neurons."

"So the intellect, if I've understood you, naturally gives rise to emotions – the experience of humor among them."

"I said no such thing. I'm no philosopher."

"And so we return to you mocking me." Byerley no longer looked quite so beleaguered. "All right, I've worked it off now, Susan. I'll tell you why I've come."

"Yes."

"It's these hearings."

"The Alvarez-Winthrop Hearings. Yes. I've been watching them when I can. There have been so many, I can hardly fit in even the ones that concern me most directly."

The Alvarez-Winthrop Hearings were the latest in a long line of preludes to the formal establishment of the Federation of the Regions of Earth. While the Regions had been brought into step economically by the Machines and their legal codes had drifted in some of the same directions over the past half-century, decisions now remained to be debated and made before the last push for globalism could come to fruition. The Northern region was the latest to host one of these convocations, Alvarez and Winthrop being the names of the two most prominent figures involved in putting together the agenda; Byerley, in his double capacity as Regional Co-ordinator and presumptive World Co-ordinator, was heavily involved in all of it. The demand on his time was such that for the last year Dr. Calvin had been dealing mainly with his subordinates whenever U.S. Robots required the attention of the Co-ordinator's office. 

Byerley said, "Did you happen to catch my presentation a couple days back?"

"The first two hours. There were five in all, I believe?"

"So they told me when they'd carried me out." 

"They didn't, really, Stephen," said Dr. Calvin, trying not to sound alarmed. 

"No, not really. Allow me a little hyperbole – the seed of all humor, I've heard."

"I'm sorry I ever indulged you on that topic."

It would have surprised the fairly small set of persons who claimed Stephen Byerley as a friend to know that Susan Calvin found him, on the whole, a restful person to talk to. Or perhaps it wouldn't have surprised them, Dr. Calvin being a notorious oddity. She appreciated a conversational partner who would learn the limits of one's comfort and scrupulously adhere to them whenever it was not absolutely necessary to step outside of them. So much that was extraneous and afflicting about human interactions could be avoided that way. 

Byerley said, "The legal mind is like a dog with an old bone. Sorry. As you may have picked up, I was chiefly concerned with giving evidence in support of the abolition of the death penalty. I don't expect there will be any problem putting it through in the end. The present generation of lawmakers are all healthily supplied with what the older folks are pleased to call 'squeamishness.' By which they mean, of course, respect for human dignity and a natural horror of violence inflicted upon it. It was all going well enough – " He paused. 

"You spoke very ably, from what I saw. As always."

"Thank you, but I'm afraid that wasn't a cheap play for applause. The trouble came once the floor was opened to questions – the conversation wandered somewhat from the point. It was one of your clan who got us off the track."

"My clan?" asked Dr. Calvin, with some asperity. 

"Psychologists. This one was a very distant cousin – an expert in the field of criminal psychology."

"I should have thought that of all people they would be in favor of medically treating criminal impulses." 

"No field is a monolith. This one is plagued with a subset of men who revel in all the nastiest bits of the human psyche. Or perhaps I am being uncharitable, and they are merely very concerned with their work – morbidly so, in this case. This one asked me whether, in my work as district attorney, I hadn't had plenty of opportunity to put myself in the minds of the city's villainous element. Was I prepared to say that all such individuals could be rehabilitated? Did I mean to imply that this was desirable? Was I being deliberately obtuse, or only fatally naive?"

"I can't imagine you succumbed to such a line of questioning, Stephen." 

"Well, no. As a matter of fact, I'm sure the other fellow came off much the worst – that's how the commentators have it. That was in this morning's newssheet, too – the first one I've had a chance to examine since the event, I can tell you. But somehow the idea caught on – this notion of putting oneself in a criminal's mind. In my day I've met prosecutors who liked the exercise, and putting the jury through it, more to the point. Said it was the surest way to a conviction. I've always thought the surer bet was asking your audience to put themselves in the mind of the victim."

"That would be your style, of course."

"The other takes it for granted that the purpose of the law is to punish, and not to correct. It's perfectly futile arguing with someone who won't be shaken from that view." 

"It hardly seems civilized," said Dr. Calvin thoughtfully, "inviting a group of citizens to imagine the inner workings of a person who feels it is possible – even necessary – to harm others for his own gain. For that is at the heart of this strategy, isn't it? The defendant is unsafe to be released upon society because there is some seed of violence in him; he has killed, and he will think nothing of killing again if it seems convenient to him. A mind such as that is not a nice place to be, and of course if one takes that approach correction will seem beside the point. In fact, I suppose, the whole exercise makes you sick?"

"Sick to my stomach, as the saying goes," Byerley admitted, quite cheerfully. "I heard not a few times the other day that it means I lack imagination. It's quite possible I do, you know – at least, I know there are people who wantonly hurt others. The evidence demonstrates they don't have any regard for humanity – history is full of dictators and serial killers. I can, if I exert myself, puzzle out the kinds of thought processes such individuals would be burdened with. But it isn't something I can really understand. I'd make a very poor writer of fiction – so it's a good thing I'm such an excellent politician." 

Dr. Calvin favored him with a frosty smile of approval, then said, "The point, if I understand you correctly, being that all these tiresome questioners wished to imply, for reasons best known to themselves, that imagination might be a significant asset to a World Co-ordinator." 

"What's that?" said Byerley sharply. "You're better informed than you implied." 

"No. I've only been paying attention. Stephen, I have it after all. You've come here with a case of pure old-fashioned wedding night jitters. Isn't that it?"

The expression got a laugh out of him. "A peculiar way of putting it, Susan. Suppose you tell me what you mean?"

"Any day now they're going to put the final stamp on it, and you'll be made World Co-ordinator – "

Byerley's expansive "Well – " cut off so obligingly it was clear he meant it to be waved away. 

And Dr. Calvin continued, " – as it's been clear to everyone for years that you're the only possible candidate for the job."

"I've been your prize horse all along."

"If you're asking whether I shall be collecting on any bets – no."

"I wasn't – and I don't suppose for one moment you'd have found any takers. But you were telling me what I'm doing here." 

"You aren't worried about the death penalty decision going wrong, and you don't have any concerns about your performance in the hearings. The only thing left is the position itself – the confirmation, I imagine. You aren't worried that the old trouble will be raked up again? Is that what the irksome line of questioning was tending towards?"

"I don't know."

Dr. Calvin nodded. "I see." 

"It isn't so much having it trotted out that worries me. The position is all turned around now. People don't want to believe it. I'm an institution now – the public has too much invested to be swayed by scare tactics. Which makes it that much easier to lay to rest. But, you see, that is the heart of the problem. This is no local election. There's going to be the devil of a media circus about the confirmation, one way and another – so even if the thing is laid to rest, having had it raised at all means it would enter the record. The idea would linger. Someday people might come to put stock in it. And it would make the vast majority of human beings very unhappy to think they'd been led – that for years they'd admired – "

"A robot," said Dr. Calvin.

"Precisely."

With animation: "And they would all be fools!"

"You're very hard on your fellow creatures, Susan." 

Dr. Calvin ignored this and went on, picking her way cautiously. "Of course I understand you perfectly. In such a situation, a robot certainly would hesitate at the prospect of harming the psyche of so many human beings. I would point out that the benefit of the robot's leadership would outweigh any shock to these fragile human egos – but you would perhaps disagree with me, and it is quite unnecessary. There are measures that could be taken. As you say, Stephen – people don't want to believe it, and anything less than certain proof will be met with resistance. It would be a simple matter to remove any proof."

"At the appropriate psychological moment – exit the robot leader, permanently, by way of a disintegration chamber." 

There was a rather long pause. Then, calmly, Susan Calvin said, "Just so." 

Dr. Calvin had never wavered in her belief on the interesting subject of Byerley's roboticity, and Byerley had always known what that was. That neither of them ever referred to it was a point of delicacy that had never needed to be addressed. He had at one point thought that this state of affairs would leave him free to be himself in her presence: nothing doing – himself being a construct he found it impossible to bring out into the light under any circumstances. Still – there were not many places in the world he might have had this conversation with, and vanishingly few people. It was a shame to have distressed her. 

"Wedding night jitters, you said. You think I'm jumping at shadows." 

"No. No, I didn't say that. But I do tell you candidly that I have every expectation of the confirmation going smoothly. It isn't as though they're going to find someone else willing to do the job."

"Not the most flattering observation. And with that I will have to go away content." 

Somewhat artificially, Dr. Calvin began, "I am glad you felt you could come to me with these anxieties, and I hope – " 

"Well – you have a way of putting things in their proper perspective. I did mean it about having to go away. I've already spent about five minutes more here than I really have at my disposal."

"By all means." 

When Byerley had gone, Dr. Calvin resumed her interrupted morning routine. She did not yet reflect too deeply on the foregoing interview. To be sure, she would be keeping a closer eye on the hearings and all their issue. But on that front, at least, the future held promise.


End file.
